Examples of essential questions to ask when structuring a digital marketing audit
Auditing your digital marketing activities is an essential technique to start a digital marketing strategy. But they’re also useful for finding opportunities to improve your digital marketing by identifying priorities you need to act on to get better results.
Knowing where to start and what to include can be difficult since although you may have your own area of expertise such as search, social media or business, you may not know about other topics. In this article, we’ll provide a comprehensive checklist you can use for your business based on the Smart Insights RACE Digital marketing framework. Each of the five parts of RACE is broken down into five to give a comprehensive evaluation of digital marketing for which I outline questions in this post.
I developed this framework…
How will cookieless advertising work? What actions do businesses need to take to future-proof their advertising plans?
Cookieless advertising: a quiet earthquake?
When Google first announced the deprecation of third-party cookies in Chrome, it quickly became the talk of the town.
The industry press coined a new, ominous word: “cookiepocalypse”. Every other webinar or conference was about this topic – even though, at that point, the consequences were unclear.
Then, Google postponed these changes; not once, but twice. Partly due to feedback they received from the industry around their Privacy Sandbox solutions, partly due to the scrutiny from antitrust authorities (especially in Europe).
Speculations started that Google would just keep on delaying the deprecation, and that the fearsome “cookiepocalypse” would, in fact, never materialize.
Some marketers got complacent. Some were distracted by newer trends, such as Generative AI. Cookieless advertising was no longer considered a hot topic.
Was this wishful thinking? Speaking at DMEXCO…
Drive the direction of your technology business' growth next year with an integrated approach to marketing strategy and planning
What is the secret of marketing for tech companies? As a popular topic amongst marketers of all backgrounds - this growing sector merits its own discussion, helping us answer questions such as:
How do you budget marketing for IT/technology companies?
What are the most reliable growth hacks for startups?
How can IT and technology marketers stand out to win more high-value customers in an increasingly saturated digital landscape?
The global technology market is expected to rise to $3,168.13 million by 2027. This evolving international digital landscape affects us all, and as marketers, it is crucial to react and adapt to stay relevant to our customers.
At Smart Insights we encourage members to use OSA to structure their marketing planning. The macro-environment for tech marketers opens up new opportunities which fuel strategies and…
Our financial services social strategy recommendations and best-practice case studies put you in the driving seat to accelerate your financial services' ROI from digital marketing in 2024
Over the past few years, financial service organizations have embraced social selling programs and employee advocacy. Those integrating the data they have generated by their financial services social media strategies into a single source of customer truth are flourishing.
Financial organizations are effectively engaging with digital customers, differentiating with real-time communication via social channels. There has been a clear shift from pre-review to post-review with the industry treating social media posts as interactive communication rather than static advertising.
Companies are recognizing that social media provides a wealth of value, enabling differentiation through human communication. They are driving value by integrating this with their CRM systems, tracking ROI, and ensuring compliance. To drive such value, organizations expect solutions to help them track ROI, integrate with CRM solutions,…
Grow your IT/high-tech business across the 'internet of things' by applying these latest industry strategies for technology product marketing
What is product marketing?
Product marketing describes the management of all processes involved in taking a product to market. This field of marketing involves working with R&D, manufacturing, logistics, comms, and sales. Since your role is so closely tied to the products in your category, product marketers take the role of advocating for the customer when product-related decisions are made (positioning, launch, development, etc). In this blog, we will explore what makes technology product marketing different.
What is technology product marketing?
Technology product marketing refers to product marketing when your products are IT/high tech. Typically sold in a B2B environment, technology product marketing is renowned for extended stakeholder relations and, currently, an increasingly competitive market. Of course, the nature of IT/high tech means many technology products will be software. The growing Software as a Service…
Dr. Dave Chaffey, author of Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice explains a process to achieve success by focusing on the 18 most important digital marketing techniques
Simply put, our definition of digital marketing, or online marketing, is:
"Achieving marketing objectives through applying digital media, data and technology."
Within this broad digital marketing definition, there are many vital channels and platforms that we will introduce and share strategies and tactics for in this article, as well as the key digital marketing KPIs and metrics for success.
In this overview of digital marketing I will explain cover:
What is digital marketing?
18 key types of digital marketing techniques across 6 media channel
How to achieve the business benefits of digital marketing using the 5Ss
Key marketing communications concepts for digital marketing
A strategic approach to digital marketing
For businesses to compete effectively today, they must use digital marketing to support their…
What AI-based tools and digital marketing techniques should businesses from small to large be considering?
I’ve been fortunate to be involved in digital marketing for over 25 years now. The opportunities presented by AI recently are the most exciting developments that I have seen in this time, since the early days, where everything from organic search, a website and email marketing seemed a similarly huge opportunity.
This range of projections of advancement in AI presented at Technology for Marketing by Implement AI highlights that we are at a relatively early stage of adoption of AI, with the biggest advancements yet to come recently hinted by the rapid adoption of ChatGPT.
In this post, I’ll summarize trends in real-world applications of AI and tools to consider in each of these categories of AI that are open to any business from small to large. Some of the…
Combine opportunity, strategy, and action to identify the right approach for your pharma brand
The last few years have been a rollercoaster ride for many of us, not least those within the pharmaceutical sector. Digital transformation is rapidly altering the way pharma brands communicate and deliver their products: consumers are becoming more knowledgeable and proactive, whilst businesses are having to adapt to an increasingly digital-first world.
And this has all happened alongside broader trends which KPMG believes will have a significant impact on revenues and business and operating models:
“The pharmaceutical sector is at a crossroads. In a heavily disrupted marketplace, characterized by shifting payer attitudes and patient empowerment, neither incremental adjustments nor steady evolution are likely to halt the decline of the traditional pharmaceutical business model.”
As a result of these different trends, it’s important for businesses to evaluate their digital communications and value delivery. Within…
How to use the power of the 70:20:10 rule as a marketing model to prioritize your digital marketing strategy
With new marketing tools and techniques available to us almost daily, it can be difficult to know where to prioritize your marketing activities to get the most 'bang for your buck'. This is where the 70:20:10 rule can really help, since it's a simple device which helps us think through how we prioritize the time and budget we put into different marketing activities.
As marketers, we need to be agile through reacting to new developments in order to gain an upper hand on competitors, but at the same time, we need to avoid being 'technology magpies' following seductive, shiny new tools that may distract us from working on optimizing the most effective channels. By splitting your spending or output into three differently sized areas, it helps you to identify priority areas, and allocate…
Set the right goals for digital marketing using the 5Ss
Do your set of goals for online marketing cover all the bases? A good set of digital marketing goals covers a range of different measures to help set, review, and control performance across all digital marketing activities. In this article, we cover the 5S framework which are a simple method to gain more focus on how digital marketing can support a business.
The 5Ss are a great simple framework, as the examples show. It's worth bearing in mind that goals are broader than objectives which we recommend as essential for setting targets and reviewing performance using digital marketing dashboards. If you need to use a more data-driven approach to digital marketing, see these primers or our free template for more examples:
Setting SMART objectives for…
